Our Universe expands
and contracts
like tides on a beach
while we hunger,
sense, sleep, search;
Exchanging Symbols
on a hunk of blue
shining bright through the cosmos
from water, air and sun
but named Earth
for the dirt
we cling to...
while waves wash worlds.

29 Nov 2008

How I Became an Eco-Warrior (excerpts)

By Jeff "Free" Luers

"The 400-600 year old Douglas Fir, Western Hemlock, and 2 Red Cedar tower over head. Standing before them is a humbling experience, like standing before a God or Goddess, it is breath taking. Hundreds and hundreds of years this forest has stood silent witness to the passing of time.

These trees were here before Christopher "Genocide" Columbus landed thousands of miles away. They stood as whites encroached further west. The protested "non-violently" in shocked silence as their fellow forest dwellers and protectors, the indigenous nations were massacred. They stood proud in defiance as their peers feel to the axe.

...Our Mother Earth is a living being, the giver of life and our home. The places we defend are ecosystems that support all kinds of life, including ours. The struggle for the Earth, for animals and humyns, is not one of separate issues. It is not just one of the oppressed against the oppressors. It is a struggle for us to remember a different way of life, one forgotten by our society. Our very lifestyles have to change. We must learn to walk in harmony and balance with the world around us. We must teach these ways to our children so that they can build on them and teach them to their children.

We have also inherited the task of ensuring that there will be wild places and animals left for our children. That the world they grow up in is not one of pollution. We must fight to ensure that their world is free from oppression in all its forms. It is not our children's battle and we cannot leave it to them to fight."

"In June 2001, 23 year-old forest defense activist Jeffrey "Free" Luers was sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in prison for the burning of three Sport Utility Vehicles (SUV's) in Eugene, Oregon. To make a statement about global warming, Jeff and his codefendent, Craig 'Critter' Marshall, set fire to 3 Sport Utility Vehicles at a Eugene car dealership. Their stated purpose was to raise awareness about global warming and the role that SUVs play in that process. No one was hurt in this action nor was that the intent. An arson specialist at trial confirmed that the action did not pose any threat to people based on its size and distance from any fuel source. Despite the fact that this action hurt no one, caused only $40,000 in damages and the cars were later resold, Jeff was sent to prison for a sentence considerably longer than those convicted of murder, kidnapping and rape in Oregon state. Jeff is a political prisoner and continues to write and agitate for his release while imprisoned at Oregon State Penitentiary."

"...The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose its demands across time zones, continents, oceans and beyond. With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk.

Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union, but that enemy is gone: our foes are more subtle and implacable today. You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world. But their day, too, is almost past, and they cannot match the strength and size of this adversary.

The adversary's closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy. Not the people, but the processes. Not the civilians, but the systems. Not the men and women in uniform, but the uniformity of thought and action that we too often impose on them.

In this building, despite this era of scarce resources taxed by mounting threats, money disappears into duplicative duties and bloated bureaucracy—not because of greed, but gridlock. Innovation is stifled—not by ill intent but by institutional inertia.

...Our challenge is to transform not just the way we deter and defend, but the way we conduct our daily business. Let's make no mistake: The modernization of the Department of Defense is a matter of some urgency. In fact, it could be said that it's a matter of life and death, ultimately, every American's.

A new idea ignored may be the next threat overlooked. A person employed in a redundant task is one who could be countering terrorism or nuclear proliferation. Every dollar squandered on waste is one denied to the warfighter. That's why we're here today challenging us all to wage an all-out campaign to shift Pentagon's resources from bureaucracy to the battlefield, from tail to the tooth.

We know the adversary. We know the threat. And with the same firmness of purpose that any effort against a determined adversary demands, we must get at it and stay at it.

Some might ask, how in the world could the Secretary of Defense attack the Pentagon in front of its people? To them I reply, I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself.

...Business enterprises die if they fail to adapt, and the fact that they can fail and die is what provides the incentive to survive. But governments can't die, so we need to find other incentives for bureaucracy to adapt and improve.

The technology revolution has transformed organizations across the private sector, but not ours, not fully, not yet. We are, as they say, tangled in our anchor chain. Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions. We cannot share information from floor to floor in this building because it's stored on dozens of technological systems that are inaccessible or incompatible.

...So today we declare war on bureaucracy, not people, but processes, a campaign to shift Pentagon resources from the tail to the tooth. All hands will be required, and it will take the best of all of us.

Now, like you, I've read that there are those who will oppose our every effort to save taxpayers' money and to strengthen the tooth-to- tail ratio. Well, fine, if there's to be a struggle, so be it. But keep in mind the story about the donkey, the burro, and the ass. The man and the boy were walking down the street with the donkey and people looked and laughed at them and said, "Isn't that foolish—they have a donkey and no one rides it." So the man said to the boy, "Get on the donkey; we don't want those people to think we're foolish." So they went down the road and people looked at the boy on the donkey and the man walking alongside -- "Isn't that terrible, that young boy is riding the donkey and the man's walking." So they changed places, went down the road, people looked and said, "Isn't that terrible, that strong man is up there on the donkey and making the little boy walk." So they both got up on the donkey, the donkey became exhausted, came to a bridge, fell in the river and drowned. And of course the moral of the story is, if you try to please everybody, you're going to lose your donkey. [Laughter.]

So as we all remember that if you do something, somebody's not going to like it, so be it. Our assignment is not to try to please everybody. This is not just about money. It's not about waste. It's about our responsibility to the men and women in uniform who put their lives at risk. We owe them the best training and the best equipment, and we need the resources to provide that. It's about respect for taxpayers' dollars. A cab driver in New York City ought to be able to feel confident that we care about those dollars."

Radio Host Has Drug Company Ties

An influential psychiatrist who was the host of the popular public radio program “The Infinite Mind” earned at least $1.3 million from 2000 to 2007 giving marketing lectures for drugmakers, income not mentioned on the program.

The psychiatrist and radio host, Dr. Frederick K. Goodwin, is the latest in a series of doctors and researchers whose ties to drugmakers have been uncovered by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa. Dr. Goodwin, a former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, is the first news media figure to be investigated.

Dr. Goodwin’s weekly radio programs have often touched on subjects important to the commercial interests of the companies for which he consults. In a program broadcast on Sept. 20, 2005, he warned that children with bipolar disorder who were left untreated could suffer brain damage, a controversial view.

“But as we’ll be hearing today,” Dr. Goodwin told his audience, “modern treatments — mood stabilizers in particular — have been proven both safe and effective in bipolar children.”

That same day, GlaxoSmithKline paid Dr. Goodwin $2,500 to give a promotional lecture for its mood stabilizer drug, Lamictal, at the Ritz Carlton Golf Resort in Naples, Fla. In all, GlaxoSmithKline paid him more than $329,000 that year for promoting Lamictal, records given to Congressional investigators show.

In an interview, Dr. Goodwin said that Bill Lichtenstein, the program’s producer, knew of his consulting but that neither thought “getting money from drug companies could be an issue.”

“In retrospect, that should have been disclosed,” he said.

...“The Infinite Mind” has won more than 60 journalism awards over 10 years and bills itself as “public radio’s most honored and listened to health and science program.” It has more than one million listeners in more than 300 radio markets. Mr. Lichtenstein said that the last original program was broadcast in October, that reruns have been running since and that “the show is going off the air.”

~ The Cold War never ended. Bush I was Vice President and President when it supposedly ended... he ran our economy into the shitter and Clinton was given eight years... and now Bush II has gotten eight more (and the economy is in the shitter again...

the Soviets are'nt in Afghanistan anymore, but we are killing people there now.

We don't worry abut the Soviets spying on us anymore, our own government is doing it to us.

We don't worry about the Soviets attacking us, we are busy attacking the Middle East.

We don't worry about the communists restricting liberties, we are adjusting to the ones that are being taken from us, by ourselves.

We don't worry about the value of our money, we let our government just make more.

We don't plan on building a righteous future, we focus on reacting to corporate pillaging.

As Obama takes over the wreckage this country is in, one can't help but feel like something alien to America has been controlling it these past eight years. The wave of emotion that has erupted with the election of Barack Obama reminds me of the Allied victory in France in WWII. After a long foreign occupation in which foreign German interests occupied the agenda of France, French governance would once again be representing the concerns of it's populace. That hope seems to pervade America after it's long neocons occupation. Here are a few of the parallels that I see.

- American Public Opinion Has Been Ignored

Polling has consistently shown that the American government pursues an agenda far to the right of American public opinion. For the slight margin of victory that Bush had in both elections he won, the sweeping changes he pursued illuminate his disregard for the sizable chunk of our society that disagree with him.

When Dick Cheney was questioned on ABC about whether the fact that two thirds of Americans were opposed to the Iraq War had any influence on decision-making, he basically said that the American people get to make their input every four years and after that they can be ignored. The government is there to represent the people and now that it seems like that is returning; joy is understandable.

- Core American Values Overturned

America fought a revolution to have its opinions represented by it's government. That has faded in Bush's term. America set up the UN after World War II to set up international law and put an end to military aggression and imperialism. That went out the window. Habeas Corpus was inherited from England where it originated in the 12th Century. Bush in that sense has embraced the morals of the middle ages. Along that line, America reinstituted the use of torture. England discontinued its use in the 1600's Frederick the Great ended it in Prussia in 1740, Italy in 1786, France in 1789, and Russia in 1801. Besides moral reasons, the practice was written off as ineffective in terms of yielding useful information. This administrations moral conduct is clearly alien to the values of most Americans.

- Basic Infrastructure Neglected

Bridges, roads, and environmental standards have degraded these past eight years. What could be of more interest to a population than the upkeep of these vital elements of society? Clearly the vital interests of the population did not matter. You would have to be completely foreign to what America is not to see it, as basic infrastructure degraded tremendously in Bush's tenure.

- National Resources Diverted Overseas

If you study any foreign occupation, one common thread would be that national wealth would be diverted into foreign lands. While American healthcare, education, and infrastructure languished, we dumped billions of dollars into Iraq and pursued an otherwise aggressive and destructive foreign policy across the world at large at tremendous cost.

On top of that, national debt doubled the past eight years. It's like America lost a war, suffered an occupation and had to pay a 5 trillion dollar indemnity. We're in a similar position to France in 1870 or Germany in 1919 in that our common interests have been ignored, we've pursued an aggressive foreign policy to our own detriment and we are now deeply in debt.

- Propaganda Tuned Up

Bush took the stance of a foreign occupier in his governance- rational argument would never win the minds and hearts of the masses so crude propaganda such as Fox News was trotted out to scare and paralyze America into obedience. The same quest for obedience through misinformation and crude scare tactics are the same you see in the totalitarian governments from South America to Asia that have brought nothing but misery to their own people and the world at large.

22 Nov 2008

"If there was any effort to have war-crimes prosecutions of the Bush administration, you'd instantly destroy whatever hopes you have of bipartisanship," said Robert Litt, a former Justice criminal division chief during the Clinton administration.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/22/obama-considering-commiss_n_145729.html

~~

At this point I think it is reasonable to wonder what kind of a crime could be proven that actually would make G.W. Bush defend himself in a court of law... or even in dialogue with his people.

"His ( Obama's ) outwardly progressive "change" persona is perfectly calibrated to divert, capture, control, and contain coming popular rebellions. He is uniquely qualified to simultaneously surf, de-fang, and "manage" the U.S. and world citizenry's hopes for radical and democratic transformation in the wake of the Bush-Cheney nightmare."

"Emmanuel ( chosen by Obama for Chief of Staff ) is a former leading member of the corporate-neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Formed by business-oriented elites to increase the Democratic Party's distance from labor, environmentalism, blacks, and Civil Rights, the DLC's mission was to steer the party closer to the corporate, imperial, southern, suburban, and racially accomodationist center. It's goal was to advance post-partisan convergence between Democratic and Republican agendas and to impose economically and racially regressive polices underneath the cloak of "progressive" strategy and "pragmatic" "realism."

Emmanuel was a leading Clinton administration agent of the corporate-globalizationist investors-rights bill called the "North American Free Trade Agreement." He is a leading liaison between corporate funding sources and the Democratic Party.

The son a wealthy Israeli doctor, he is a fierce defender of Israel's apartheid regime and its illegal occupation of Palestine.

He played a critical role in favoring conservative and pro-war Democrats over progressive antiwar Democrats during the 2006 congressional primaries."

~~~~

To be fair , these men have not even yet assumed their leadership positions. There is great hope for peace, economic and environmental growth and social development.

We have had too much destructive policy for far too long.

I pray that this new administration does not further any foreign or domestic wars,

ends or at least minimizes the war on drugs and expanding prison industry,

stops protecting and enhancing the pro-corporate neo-liberal exploitation of earth

15 Nov 2008

"The single most useful thing I've learned from science fiction is that every present moment, always, is someone else's past and someone else's future...

If I could magically access one body of knowledge from the real future, I think I'd choose either their history of the ancient past or whatever they might have that most resembles science fiction. The products of two different speculative activities. They'll know a lot more about our past than we do, and trying to reverse-engineer history out of dreams, as I recall, was quite a uniquely exciting activity." ~William Gibsonhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026821.600-scifi-special-william-gibson.html

http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/index.asp

…I felt that I was trying to describe an unthinkable present and I actually feel that science fiction's best use today is the exploration of contemporary reality rather than any attempt to predict where we are going…The best thing you can do with science today is use it to explore the present. Earth is the alien planet now.

14 Nov 2008

The aggressive opinions of this interviewer betray him as prosecutor, not reporter.

The Weather Underground is a 2002 documentary film based on the rise and fall of the American radical organization The Weathermen. The group's goal was to "bring the (Vietnam) War home" through acts of terrorism.

* "We felt that doing nothing in a period of repressive violence is itself a form of violence. That's really the part that I think is the hardest for people to understand. If you sit in your house, live your white life and go to your white job, and allow the country that you live in to murder people and to commit genocide, and you sit there and you don't do anything about it, that's violence." -Naomi Jaffe

* "Once Richard Nixon was elected president and inaugurated in January 1969, we were targeted, bam, bam, bam, by a very sophisticated, advanced, counterintelligence program; At the same time, by very crude and violent police." -Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Black Panther Party

* "This pattern of harassment is going on against the Black Panther Party across the country. On Friday, the Watts office of the Black Panther Party was bombed and demolished. Last week the Des Moines office was bombed. They can't stop anything we're doing as a legitimate political organization so they come in and shoot us and shoot tear gas at us like they've lost they minds." -Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Black Panther Party

13 Nov 2008

"Our Mother is the Earth. All the plants, whatever is on earth is... some of it is our food, and some are medicines and that's how we live on. And as though we are the children of our mother Earth and how she feeds us is causing the whole thing. We are going through suffering from everything that... what the B.I.A. is doing to my nation." ~ Roberta Blackgoat

Broken Rainbow is a 1985 documentary film about the government-enforced relocation of thousands of NavajoNative Americans from their ancestral homes in Arizona. The Navajo were relocated to aid mining speculation in a process that began in the 1970s and continues to this day. The film is narrated by Martin Sheen. The title song was written by Laura Nyro.

"Over the last 72 hours there has been a strange melange of cryptic messages leaked from world political leaders about what could be in store for America over the next few months.

These predictions of impending doom come from England, France, Australia and the United States.

Biden told the top Democratic donors that a “generated crisis” will develop within six months and Barak Obama will need the help of community leaders to control the population as unpopular decisions are made and Americans resist.

Biden speaking at the fundraiser, “I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate, And he’s gonna need help. And the kind of help he’s gonna need is, he’s gonna need you - not financially to help him - we’re gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it’s not gonna be apparent initially, it’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right.”

Biden’s ominous language at the Seattle Sheraton are followed with statements by long time establishment insiders Colin Powell and Madeline Albright both say there is a massive crisis on the horizon and Biden was simply making a “statement in fact.”

“The problems will always be there and there’s going to be a crisis which will come along on the 21st, 22nd of January that we don’t even know about right now.” Powell told Meet the Press.

Lord West, adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown on national security says, “There is another great plot building up again and we are monitoring. It dipped slightly and is now rising again within the context of severe. The threat is huge. We have done all the things that we need to do, but the threat is building - the complex plots are building,”

Across the channel from England you have the French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warning the press that he believes Israel will strike Iran before they can develope nuclear weapons completley ignoring the fact that the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBradei, said that Iran lacks the key components to produce an atomic weapon.

“The devastation that could be wreaked by one major nuclear weapons incident alone puts 9/11 and almost everything else [in] to the category of the insignificant,” Rudd said.

Why are there so many high level politicians around the world in a seemingly coordinated effort warning of huge threats and developing crisis’ that may include a nuclear device? Are they preparing the masses for an event or series of events that have been in the making for some time? Is the public being prepared for new and forming enemies with a potential to plunge the entire world into war?"----end quote---

A number of notable public figures, to be sure; Biden, Rudd, Colin Powell, Matelaine Albright, Lord West and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. Taken alone there are plenty of ready explanations, but within 72hrs.?